One in every 5 children is from foreign or mixed families in Italy
Birth rate in Italy shows that 22% of newborns are children of foreign or mixed families. The data is from the latest report by the Istat, the country's official institute, about birth and fertility in Italy.
The study shows that children of mixed or foreign parents are born mainly in the Center-North of the country, in Emilia Romagna, Lombardy, Veneto, Liguria and Tuscany.
In first place are Romanians (13.530 born in 2018), followed by Moroccans (9.193), Albanians (6.944) and Chinese (3.362).
Na Emilia Romagna and Lombardy, for example, the rate is even higher. In 2018, one in four newborns in the Region was of foreign nationality: 24,3%.
Almost 22%, however, in Lombardy, and one in five children in Veneto, Liguria, Tuscany and Piedmont.
The number could be even higher if it were not for the acquisition of Italian citizenship, which consequently does not include children in the list of foreign children born in Italy.
Numbers down
For the first time, in fact, births to foreign parents in 2016 fell to 70 thousand (69.379), and stopped at 65.444 in 2018, 14,9% of total births.
This is also because resident foreign women are, like Italian women, “getting older”: the proportion of 35-49 year olds in the total number of foreign citizens of reproductive age rose from 42,7% on January 1, 2008 to 52,7% on January 1, 2019.
Children of foreign parents in Italy therefore decreased by 14.500 units from 2012 to 2018. As the analysis reports, “the growing degree of “maturity” of immigration in our country, also attested by the notable increase in the acquisition of Italian citizenship.
It is increasingly complex to measure the family behavior of citizens of foreign origin. In fact, there is a significant number of acquisitions of citizenship by communities that contribute most to the birth rate of the resident population”, says the study.
In fact, as of January 1, 2018, around 1 million and 345 thousand people lived in Italy. foreigners who have acquired citizenship Italian.
Of these, there are almost 757 thousand women, around 56,3% of the total. About 389.000 are between 15 and 49 years old.
There are 84 thousand women of Moroccan origin, those of Albanian origin number more than 82 thousand and those of Romanian origin almost 53 thousand.
In general, these communities represent more or less 29% of the total number of foreign citizens in Italy.